As a small charity or social enterprise you may have a particular people issue you have never had to deal with before and need to take advice on how to deal with it fairly and within the law.
Example: redundancy and maternity leave
For example, a small charity asked my advice on how to deal with a potential redundancy situation where one of the people to be made redundant was on maternity leave. There are two important areas to consider here:
- Making an employee redundant is considered a dismissal and therefore an employer should ensure that the dismissal is fair. To make sure that a dismissal is fair, a number of steps need to be taken to ensure a proper process of selection, consultation, and notification of redundancy is followed.
- A woman on maternity leave has special protection under employment legislation and it is important that she is dealt with appropriately in a redundancy situation. She would be entitled to preferential treatment in certain situations.
If this issue was not dealt with correctly then there could be a risk of the employee claiming unfair dismissal and/or sex discrimination.
